Review: Playing the French

Playing the French is the second opening repertoire book by the Quality Chess authors Jacob Aagaard and Nikolaos Ntirlis. I was very enthusiastic about their first book, The Tarrasch Defence (2011), not because I am a great fan of this opening myself, but because Aagaard and Ntirlis presented an original yet consistent and convincing framework which, despite its complex details, was straightforward and centered around just a few strategic concepts.

Their latest book is an even more ambitious project and, being an occasional French player myself, my expectations were high-strung. The authors claim to present “a fighting repertoire with a minimum of drawish positions and perpetual checks.” They have certainly achieved this goal, but the result is such an abundance and, at the same time, absence of details that it's hard to imagine any Black player adopting this repertoire without going (or being) slightly mad.

First, let me deal with a couple of sidelines. At club level (and, in fact, well above that), these are never to be underestimated, as I know from experience, but Aagaard and Ntirlis deal with them rather briefly. For instance, after 1.e4 e6 2.Nc3 d5, they write that “It is practical to meet 3.Nf3 with 3...Nf6, and after 4.e5 Nfd7 5.d4 we reach variation B of Chapter 12. Harald Keilback in his original work Knight on the Left: 1.Nc3 agrees with me.”

This may be true, but there's a little bit more to it, for White's extra option 5...c5 6.Bg5!? (which is the introduction to the dangerous 'Jackall Variation') is nowhere mentioned.

Just too easy

Curiously, against the gambit line 1.e4 e6 2.Nf3 d5 3.e5 c5 4.b4!? the authors' recommended continuation is 4...cxb4 which, at the very least, gives White exactly what he wants. Their main line continues with 5.a3 bxa3 6.d4 Nc6 7.c3 Bd7 8.Bd3 h6 9.0-0 a6 10.Nxa3 Rc8

“This position has been recommended by Eingorn and his assessment is that White has insufficient compensation for the pawn. My engines don't believe him, but I certainly do after looking at this position for a long time and playing it against both humans and my PC. As in many other lines in the French Defense, we can afford to leave our king on his original square in order to take care of more urgent matters first. In this case White has long-term prospects on the queenside, as our kingside can take care of itself without help. A set-up that I found very comfortable for Black here was ...Na5, ...Rc6 and ...Qc7 followed by ...Nge7 or even ...Bxa3 followed by ...Nge7, ...Nc4 and ...b5; I couldn't find a way for White to stop this or make it ineffective.

11.c4 In the only practical test, White tried this move, but it fails to trouble Black. However, a calmer build-up by White would allow Black to follow the plan mentioned above. For example: 11.Qe2 Na5 12.Bb2 Ne7 13.Nc2 Nf5 Black is developing easily, and let's forget his extra pawn.”

That does sound convincing, doesn't it? They've looked it ‘for a long time’ and even played the position out against humans and a computer! But if this is such a good position for Black - who has a pawn extra - why do all engines keep evaluating this position as roughly equal if not minimally better for White? The authors don't bother answering this question but it's a very relevant one indeed. After all, this is a gambit so all White seeks is compensation for the pawn - and according to the strongest engines in the world, he has it!

I'm not claiming I understand this position better than Eingorn, Aagaard and Ntirlis, who are all much stronger than me, but in my opinion it's just too easy to say you don't believe your engines and then only give one sample line to illustrate your point, especially if your audience doesn't all consist of fellow title holders.

What if White just develops his pieces and just sits on his space advantage until Black runs out of useful moves? Even the weird-looking 11.Qb3!?!, which is Rybka's suggestion - actually provoking Black's plan of Na5 and Rc6 - is not clear at all: White retains long term chances on both wings and Black must wait passively even if he can carry out his dream plan until White shows his cards.

This is what (positional) gambit play is all about, after all. If that kind of long-term compensation isn't worth taking a bit more seriously, then we might as well dismiss the entire Volga/Benko Gambit. I, for one, would be happy to play this position with White against equal opposition if given the chance, especially knowing that Houdini and Rybka are supportive in principle.

Building a repertoire

The authors use similar reasoning in the Euwe System of the Advance Variation. In this notoriously tricky gambit in which White sacrifices all his central pawns, the recommended line is 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Bd7 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Qb6 8.0-0 Nxd4 9.Nbd2! Ne7 10.Nxd4 Qxd4 11.Nf3 Qb6 12.Be3 Qd8!

Aagaard and Ntirlis mention that this important position has been analysed at length by many other authors in the recent past, such as Viktor Moskalenko, Nikita Vitiugov and Simon Williams. Black's last move was dismissed by Antic & Maksimovic in The Modern French (2012) but Aagaard and Ntirlis “couldn't find anything wrong with this move.” Indeed, their analysis convincingly show that Black doesn't have much to fear if he does his homework: “13. Ng5 (...) gives White compensation, not an advantage. The situation is highly unclear, but not at all bad for Black.”

Based on the concrete evidence presented in Playing the French, this seems certainly true. But here, too, it's obvious that White players who have this system in their repertoire are perfectly happy to play this position knowing they have ‘mere’ compensation. Why give them what they want and walk into their preparation? Black still has to memorize lots of tricky variations with lots of opportunities to go astray along the way.

Aagaard and Ntirlis often seem strangely blind to this element of practical play, preferring to focus on whether Black can survive from a theoretical and computer-analyzed perspective - instead of pausing to ask the question whether Black actually wants to play these positions in the first place. (To their credit, the authors also analyze the alternative option 9...Nxf3+ instead of 9...Ne7, but this, they admit, leads to a position “where White's chances could be evaluated as a tiny bit better.”)

Sharpest possible version

Here's another example of what I mean, in a fascinating line of the the MacCutheon variation with the rare 6.Bc1: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Bb4 5.e5 h6 6.Bc1 Ne4 7.Qg4 g6 8.a3 Bxc3+ 9.bxc3 Nxc3 10.Bd3!

“We have reached an unclear endgame with White having two strong bishops against a rook and three pawns. I would evaluate the position as objectively somewhat better for Black, although White has his trumps as well.”

This evaluation may well be entirely correct, but the question is also whether you would want to play this position without analyzing it extensively yourself first and knowing exactly where to put your pieces? Why don't the authors explain what's going on and give some basic ideas for both players to support their verdict? Isn't this what chess students are mostly interested in?

This is my problem with much of the material presented in Playing the French: it’s all highly original, but very often it's also very concrete, highly untested, sharp as a razor's edge and therefore dangerous if you don't study it yourself very well. Stuff like this is not only ‘unfinished business’, but also risky business. One fresh grandmaster game in this line could demolish an entire branch of your repertoire - without much of a backup.

In general I would only recommend this book to extremely serious, confident and dedicated students who are not afraid to spend a lot of time familiarizing themselves in great detail with the variations presented in this book. The content of Playing the French is often much too theoretical to be of much value to the practical player, but at other times it's nowhere near detailed enough to serve as a truly ‘scientific’ guide to the French.

Take another important line treated in the book: the Tarrasch Variation (3.Nd2). The authors’ main choice against this is again the sharpest possible version of 3…c5:

“13.Nf5 This is the main idea behind playing 11.Re1, and to someone seeing this position for the first time, it looks really dangerous. However, there is enough practical material nowadays to ascertain that Black can equalize. (…)

13…Bxh2+ 14.Kh1 0-0 15.Nxg7 Rd8! 16.Qf3 Kxg7

We can now see the point of the zwischenzug with the rook. It is not immediately obvious how White should continue his attack. From this point on, both sides have to proceed with caution, as a single inaccurate move can lead directly to disaster. The following notes may seem daunting to some readers, as it seems that Black has to remember a lot of complicated theory, but if you play through the notes a few times at home, you should not find it difficult to repeat the moves at the board.”

Seriously? I’ve looked at this line myself a couple of years ago, and the (theoretical) complexities in this position are vast - there’s no way you can understand what’s going on by just ‘playing through the notes a few times at home’. For starters, the only move given for White in this position is 17.Bh6+! which is indeed the strongest continuation, but what if White plays something like 17.Qe3!?

I recall looking at this move at the time, and my question to Aagaard and Ntirlis would be how many people they think are able to find the only defense 17…Kh8! 18.Qg5 Nd7! 19.Qh4 Bd6! behind the board? Even there, the situation is actually far from clear without an engine running in the background for constant help.

And this is just one pretty random line in this variation, not even White's most promising option (which, according to the authors, is 12.Qe2! and also leads to hellishly complex play).

If I were Black, I think I would prefer the slightly inferior endgames after 4...exd5 against the Tarrasch Variation - because the other stuff is just way above my head without spending hours and hours analyzing it myself. (Ironically, the book’s back cover assures us that “the characteristic blocked pawn centre leads to situations where a player with superior understanding can overcome an opponent whose expertise lies in computer-assisted preparation”!)

Examples like this make the book strangely unsatisfying to me, the authors’ trademark originality and audacity notwithstanding. Despite the sometimes really good, well-analyzed content, too often I found myself doubting if the authors knew anything at all about practical tournament chess. For all their frequently repeated assertions that this is "a practical guide", they don't seem to believe it themselves.

Unfinished symphony

This Christmas, Lars von Trier’s much-anticipated new and controversial movie Nymphomaniac will hit the cinemas – or rather, a trimmed-down version of it, for the original 5,5 hour movie was cut to 4 hours and split in two parts which will be released separately a few weeks later. Von Trier has already declared that this cut-down version is incoherent and that he refuses to take responsibility for it. And he is right, of course.

I couldn’t help thinking of Lars von Trier (who, by the way, has an equally original and creative ambition as Aagaard and Ntirlis do) when I read Jacob Aagaard’s Introduction to Playing the French. There, he writes that the book’s first draft was close to 700 pages – that is, 250 more than the present publication – “as we had checked virtually every possibility in every line, but eventually managed to whittle the project down to the present version.”

In my view, it would have been better to stick to the original and include those additional 250 pages after all - or perhaps to split the book into two equal volumes. I think it would have made a much more coherent piece of work and I would probably not have had the feeling that I was listening to an unfinished symphony. Now, like in Lars von Trier’s case, the work feels incomplete and therefore doesn't live up to its potential.

Author's note: the original text of the review (which was lost during writing) also contained a positive paragraph on the book's treatment of the Chigorin variation (2.Qe2) which should have been included as well.

Comments

Quality chess have and continue to plug up the hole for high level chess books and whilst books such as the 'starting out' series are excellent, the Quality chess books serve really to give more ambitious players the tools to develop a strong opening repertoire. I really don't see how this book fails to reach an impractical repertoire if the criteria we are looking for are:

Sound and playable repertoire at a strong level (suitable for use against titled players)

At the same time not overwhelmingly complicated with sharp theory.

It's kind of a threshold, the easier the repertoire is to play, the more likely the repertoire just doesn't cut it, after all thats why so much theory develops on 'main' lines, because they are harder to break down. And to expect that your not going to have to learn some theory in modern computer aided times is just unreasonable. Try developing a repertoire on the Najdorf or Dragon etc and you'll easily see that it could quite literally take 1000s of pages if you were to adopt such an illustrative game style approach (which I think the reader should appreciate as it helps to develop their understanding of the positions). I think it's clear with the ideas that have been produced in this book (and there are some fantastic and original novelties here) that Aagard and Ntirlis have put a lot of effort into this and deserve a lot more credit than has been given here.

This is not supposed to be a GM rep book, so think it is fair to be critical if overcomplex. In fact on the quality chess blog they mention that Berg offers a more ambitous rep, involving the Winawer, and they are offering a more solid rep in this book.

Fully agree that if the reader puts a lot of work in it, this book might be of great value. (In fact, I mention this explicitly.) But in my opinion a reviewer should also look at other things, such as is the book coherent, is the content overall consistent, how is the book marketed to potential buyers, are sidelines treated fairly, etc. Just my 2 cents :-)

I fully agree with play_dead. I've just got this book myself and it looks exceptional. I can't comment on specifics since I don't yet claim to have looked at the book in as much detail as the reviewer might have done (yet) but it's logical to assume that very strong players - that is after all who the book is aimed at - are going to be doing - and should be doing - supplementary study, with Houdini, Chessbase etc. so I don't see a problem with recommending the razor sharp lines that need more investigation.

I very much doubt the sort of players the book is aimed at are going to be facing the 'Jackall Variation' on a regular basis!

Poor and misleading review. I have the book myself and I can say from my personal experience, in which I regularly face 2400+ opposition, this book is nothing short of brilliant. The quality chess series is aimed for ambitious and strong chess players who are willing to invest time into learning cutting edge and sharp long lines of theory. Why? Because they're established main lines for a reason, if you learn the material well, you will have a very powerful repertoire at your disposal where White struggles to find an advantage. I think your problem with this repertoire is stylistic and actually for the audience it's aimed at, these ambitious ways of playing are perfectly acceptable.

I am a Winawer player so this book isn`t really a must for me, but I do like some other suggestions. (eg. Bd7 instead of Qb6 against the advanced v. althogh I adopted Bd7 ever since Simon Williams` book appeared couple of years ago)

@El-Ajedrecista I really do like Avrukh`s books, especially the Grunfeld ones. Maybe his style is a bit dry and lacking prose, but he really delivers good analisis. The `problem` is that Avrukh assumes the readers have at least decent knowledge about the openings in question and , secondly, he assumes that we should know how to handle the middlegame positions he leaves us with...and those are really tough assumptions.

Quality chess is really hit or miss. Avruhk's books are atrocious and laughable. No self respecting GM would ever adopt his recommendedation of fianchetto against everything. Its bad against the Benoni, its bad against the Grunfeld, its just okay against the KID.... Yet his books won book of the year and the sheep follow him like he's an opening god. I have one game after game with black, not by refuting his specific lines, but simply because many of the systems he recommends offer black way too much counter-play to be respectable white openings.

Even the tag line of the books is Orwellian! "Tired of bad positions, try the mainlines!" Yeah, like the fianchetto systems are mainline against anything... (Save the Benko and the Dutch)

As far the French. Watson's play the French is still worth its weight in gold. However, the key to understanding the French is learning how to play closed positions with a space disadvantage. Some players are never comfortable with this, even if through tactical play they can get counterplay and overcome this permanent disadvantage.

Thanks for responding, Arne. You're one of the best chess reviewers, and you influence what I buy. My basic concern was that after reading your review, people would decide not to buy the book - which would be a shame as it has a lot to offer. I'll shut up now.

My main criticism is that it's very unbalanced. One moment they give hundreds of very complex lines and at other times they only give one sample line. One moment they say this is a practical guide, another they recommend the sharpest topical variations. It seems to me they just wanted too much with this book.

Would you mind listing/describing what it is that you deem to be the book's "other virtues"? It is nice to have a second opinion(or a third, fourth, etc.). I personally don't play the French but I may start to just to understand its weaknesses.

I enjoy Arne's reviews usually, but I think this one is really harsh. Having given myself this book for Christmas, I'm impressed - it's well written and edited, it covers a coherent, mainstream repetoire which is close to what I'd like to play, and it's very thorough. Arne does say that it's highly original, concrete, sharp.

Arne comments include "often much too theoretical to be of much value to the practical player, but at other times it's nowhere near detailed enough to serve as a truly ‘scientific’ guide" (huh?). The basic criticism seems to be that the approach is not as practical as he would like. Well, it's not very practical for any amateur to play mainlines. How practical is it to try to master the Nf6 Tarrasch or the Qg4 Winawer?

The book has lots of other virtues, and I think it will support me for years - and I will enjoy the Qxd5 Tarrasch, win or lose, instead of the exd5 Tarrasch, which would make me lose my will to live. This book is at least as good as the other similar French repetoire books. It's quite unfair to suggest otherwise.

Summarized (I haven't got it yet, but since I have a lot of their books already) I think this is more like an idea-guide which more or less covers everything. It has his preferences and gives indeed some kind of a repertoire but it rather presents the ideas and you can play them as you like. Without even reading I am completly d'accord with the critic above, but my evaluation would rather be it presents you many ideas in the french including the dangerous lines and explanation. The only thing you have to bring with you is "just" chess-understanding; that means you can play by yourself or/and can evaluate the position by yourself, so if you get troubles you sit down and analyse instead of blindly trust the book.

If you instead search for a developed bullet(engine)-proofed repertoire you have just to memorize [and if you allow me to critisize- run into the danger just to play pure safe computer moves, which firstly make your play drawish, sometimes boring, and secondly don't bring yourself forward inspite of playing stronger],then you should rather buy the 3 GM-Series of Emanuel Berg on the French (2 are out this month). It contains 2000 pages detailed analysis and there you indeed don't need much more than memorizing

Thanks for the heads-up ... so just to be clear they recommend the McCutcheon, c5 an Qxd5 v's Tarrasch, Bd7 lines in the Advance?

It will be interesting to compare with Watson, Vituigov, Williams and the Antic book - but overall what you are saying doesnt make me want to rush out and buy this. Maybe wait for the GM Repertoire stuff.

Personally I have never trusted the Qxd5 set-ups in the Tarrasch - though I also shy away from the most critical tests when I have the White pieces.

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